THE COLD LIGHT OF DAY: SHOOTING THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE

Crooked alleyways, muddy cobblestone streets, ramshackle rooms crammed with thwarted dreams—a tactile streak of melancholy runs through Magnus von Horn’s The Girl with the Needle (2024). Drawing on an infamous crime case that sent ripples through early 20th-century Denmark, this chilling parable walks a taut line between period drama and genre piece. While the painstaking attention to costume and set design cultivates an immersive, sensorial past, the film overlays its social-realist setting with horror-inflected visuals that evoke the unease of a dark fairy tale. Here, the Big Bad Wolf is no simple monster, but a system that drives vulnerable people to desperate measures.

Struggling to survive as a widow, the film’s protagonist, Karoline, moves through the city like a stray animal, drifting between grueling manual jobs and dingy lodgings. In her haunting performance, Vic Carmen Sonne portrays the fallen character with wide-eyed ferality. Her touching naivete and fiery impulsiveness provide a compelling contrast to the cool imperturbability of Dagmar, a mysterious older woman played by Danish acting legend Trine Dyrholm. Living with her young daughter Erena (Ava Knox Martin), Dagmar runs a candy store, whose forbidding walls conceal unimaginable secrets. 

If the intense bond between the two women initially appears to offer a shelter against a world that controls and exploits women’s bodies, it soon morphs into something ambiguously macabre. Insidious societal forces are made flesh by Michal Dymek’s atmospheric camerawork, the expressionistic black-and-white cinematography and tight Academy ratio foregrounding the psychological and economic wreckage left behind by the First World War. Characters are often framed within narrow corridors or against smudged window panels, compositions that suggest the trappings of their class. Thresholds are another recurring motif, echoing the internal journey of transformation experienced by Karoline. Even when conveying dire circumstances, the highly textured images crackle with an uncommon sensuousness. Poverty is not portrayed in abstract terms, but as a corporeal experience drenched in blood, sweat, and tears.

Dymek also shot von Horn’s previous feature Sweat (2020), a Cannes standout that explores loneliness in the age of social media. Though set a century apart, these films beautifully demonstrate the cinematic alchemy that occurs when these two creative minds join forces. Fresh from winning the top prize at the preeminent cinematography festival Camerimage, Dymek discusses his creative partnerships, his influences, and the unique challenges of shooting in black and white.

MUBI: How did you start collaborating with Magnus?

MICHAL DYMEK: I first met Magnus as he was graduating from the film school that I also attended. Toward the end of my studies, when I was shooting longer short films, there was a moment where he and Mariusz [Włodarski], Magnus's producer, saw one of those films. Then Magnus invited me to shoot his casting videos for Sweat. During the process, he interviewed different actors and I was shooting handheld, completely loose. Although we knew each other before, during these very basic rehearsals, Magnus got interested in the way I worked with the camera. I believe it was the reason he invited me to shoot a teaser for Sweat.

MUBI: Was there a rehearsal process for The Girl with the Needle as well?

DYMEK: It was similar. Luckily, I got involved in the process much earlier, about two and half years before principal photography. We started with conversations about the script. I also went with Magnus to his Danish castings where I shot the auditions. I visited Copenhagen during the preparation phase of the film. So yes, it was similar. But because this film is much more visual and conceptual in terms of the mise-en-scène, we also put more weight on the conversations between us and the production designer. 

Sweat and The Girl with the Needle are very similar, especially if you know Magnus's work and how he investigates the emotions of the characters. But from my perspective as a cinematographer, the projects are contrary to each other. Sweat was completely free. It has a documentary-like style, whereas The Girl with the Needle is the complete opposite. Here, we tried to use the image as a third character in the film.

MUBI: How do you and Magnus work together? Does he come to you with storyboards?

DYMEK: My first intuition after reading the script was that it was such a strong story, so brilliantly written. In a second, I could project the whole film in my head. That was two and a half years before we started the shoot. Magnus and I had really open conversations about fascination, passion, filmmaking, and our love for cinema. 

Then about a year after the beginning of the process, I got an offer to work as a tutor for a Polish workshop for young filmmakers. I decided to accept this invitation, and I offered to bring over Magnus. We came up with the idea of working with black-and-white photography and studying how it reflects emotion. Alongside our meetings and theoretical conversations about meaning and symbolism, we suddenly got the chance to study with each other while teaching the young filmmakers. It was a beautiful time. We spent over a week watching iconic black-and-white movies every day. It was almost like returning to film school ourselves. We tested many kinds of photographic solutions which, after a year and a half, started to evolve into what you see on the screen.

I like to do as much as possible before the shoot. For me, prep time is an extremely important phase in film production. Together with Magnus, we spent hours in his car talking, listening to music, and driving to all of the places where we finally shot the film. Both of us are based in Poland, and almost everything was shot there. This decision was made on purpose, because we knew that Poland has the very unique charm of something which has passed. It's hard to capture something like this in Denmark or Sweden. 

MUBI: It's interesting that you bring up photography, because I was going to ask if early photography was an influence—especially glass-plate photography, which has a kind of wet look.

DYMEK: Yes, the large format. We were inspired by everything that has an element of the magical in pictures taken around the First World War. It was mainly large-format photography, but we were looking at still photography as well. We were also fascinated by older films which still look and work like modern films—films like In Cold Blood (1967), Oliver Twist (1948), Schindler's List (1993), and Nobody’s Calling (1960).  We wanted to keep this world of early 20th-century Copenhagen—which we shot in Poland—as rough, tough, and real as possible to allow people to feel the picture, even though it's without colors.

We wanted the viewer to feel the texture, to imagine that they are right next to the characters. Although the whole film is very stylized and formal, our dream was to transfer the wetness of sweat and fatigue, as well as the humidity, the dirtiness, and the oppression. Our aim was to construct the background from which she's trying to escape. The setting is very rooted in her motivations and her character.

MUBI: The film is loaded with cramped apartments and narrow stairways. How much of it was constructed on sets?

DYMEK: In general, our approach was to do as much as possible in camera. Our dream was to shoot on film. We didn't have a budget. Although we finally went with digital, we wanted to keep an analog approach. We tried to find everything in real life or on location. Most of the interiors were built on a stage, such as the candy store or Dagmar's apartment. We also built the interior of Karoline's new apartment, the attic one. However, the first apartment, where we shot the opening scene, was done on location. So it was a combination. Even the nocturnal wide shots, where the camera flies above the rooftop, were mostly done in camera. We built a lot of things in miniature, instead of using completely CGI techniques. I'm not super into CGI, and neither is Magnus. I prefer to have more control when it comes to special effects on the set. Here, we used miniature techniques for the first time in our lives. It was a tribute to an older kind of filmmaking, which was exciting. I really fell in love with this technique and would love to do it again.

MUBI: For the opening, and also at other points in the film, there are unsettling close-ups of the characters' faces. When the light changes, their faces distort as well. Was that effect also done in camera?

DYMEK: Yes, everything was done in camera. Of course, we improved it a little bit in post-production, but all of the multiexposure effects were done in camera. It was an idea that we developed from the script. There was a sequence where Karoline is getting more addicted, and she's going into stronger trances. I found this photograph on the internet of two faces, but exposed twice, creating one face. It was such a revelation. During the edit, Magnus, together with our editor Agnieszka Glinska, used the sequence as a refrain. They moved it to the beginning of the film. It's an interesting idea to create a structure: a frame with which we start and end.

MUBI: When you were shooting the film, were you able to see what it would look like in black and white on the set?

DYMEK: We recorded everything in color because we wanted to have the possibility to adjust different color channels. Sometimes, using the blue cochannel, we could make older faces look much dirtier. With the red channel, we could bleach out people's faces. It was great to be able to play with those channels, even though the final film is without colors. 

MUBI: Are there elements that you might not think about so much when shooting in color, but become more important in black and white?

DYMEK: Yeah, absolutely. Working in black and white can be a great help. When you're shooting in natural locations, it's much easier to just forget about the colors. In Poland, there are landscapes where the colors are very varied. It's hard to be in control of those locations if you don't have a gigantic budget. Shooting in black and white is great because suddenly you forget about these problems. It is very budget-friendly. 

Working with light is a little bit different. For example, soft light, which color film loves, works a little bit less powerfully. Black-and-white photography often requires hard light. It enhances many more emotions than soft light. Your perception of what's white and what's black is also totally different [compared to shooting in color].

Another one of the top rules was to dial down everything that was white. We wanted to keep faces as the brightest points on the screen and let the viewers focus more on the emotions. When we built the set decorations, we used weird colors for the paint and the wallpaper to build a dark backdrop for our close-ups and action shots.

MUBI: What kind of weird colors?

DYMEK: Crazy greens, or very dark reds. For example, whenever you entered Dagmar's store or her apartment, you'd have a feeling that you have wandered into some theme park, because it was so poppy. But when you look in the camera, suddenly the sets are perfectly balanced. Color is only one element. There's also texture. When there are no colors, you pay much more attention to the texture. You need to build up the depth of this flat surface, which means maybe you need to polish it or add some breaks or unevenness. In each apartment and location, it was a very complicated process of developing proper walls to create the perfect environment.

MUBI: When you spoke about the importance of contrast, I think of how Erena, the young girl, is shot in the film. There's always light emanating from her, and it's not just because she's blonde. The way that she's lit and photographed makes her come off as a beacon of hope.

DYMEK: Exactly. Again, it was a combination of the script, our aspirations, and the amount of time we had on the set. In the film, Erena is one of the few elements of goodness that is not rotten yet. She lives in horrible circumstances. She's not aware of what's happening behind these walls. It was nice that Magnus cast Ava [Knox Martin]. She was super pale, and she also had a very strong glance. When we saw her photos for the first time, there was already something extremely cinematic about how she looked into the camera. She also had this bright blonde hair, which was very alarming for me at the beginning. I was thinking about her bright aura against all the dark interiors, which would create extremely high contrast. And it was a little bit of a struggle. Whenever we placed the camera on her, we needed to bring down the light, because her illumination was so high. She became this angel: a fallen angel who is going to be rescued at the end of the film.

MUBI: Since the film is based on a true crime, did you and Magnus discuss how to present the story in a sensitive way?

DYMEK: Of course. We went through all the facts surrounding the real Dagmar, such as her economic conditions, her apartment, and where she was in the world. The research influenced us in terms of our location and costume choices. We were aware that this would be half a genre film, with horror and thriller elements. However, we didn't want to show off by being drastic or brutal. We tried to tell the story, not to shock people. For me, another golden rule is less is more. Like Steven Spielberg with Jaws (1975). You almost never see the shark, but you're afraid of it. So here you don't have to see the explicit act, but if you see a little bit of the aftermath, it creates an even stronger image of what Dagmar was doing there. We were very interested in keeping everything outside of frame, to let people imagine those images by themselves. What happened there? It's a much more elegant way of storytelling.